キット・デ・ワールは、家族、階級、人種、社会的養護の経験を描く小説家、編集者。アイルランド人の母とカリブ海地域出身の父のもと、バーミンガムのアイルランド系とカリブ系のコミュニティーで育った。専業作家になる前は刑事法・家族法の分野で15年間働き、治安判事、養子縁組の審査委員、里子の養育に関する社会福祉機関の助言者も務めた。2016年の初長編『My Name Is Leon』（未邦訳）は、1981年のイギリスを舞台に、里親のもとで暮らす混血の少年レオンと、白人の弟ジェイクが引き離される経験を描いた。家族との再会を望む少年の視点を通して、人種や養護制度をめぐる大人の判断を捉え、2017年のKerry Group Irish Novel of the Yearを受賞した。初長編の前払金の一部でバークベック校の創作修士課程の奨学金を設け、経済的な事情で学べない書き手を支援した。2022年の回想録『Without Warning and Only Sometimes』（未邦訳）では、貧困や宗教的な規律、アイルランド・カリブ・イギリスという複数の文化の間で過ごした子ども時代と、読書との出会いを振り返った。2025年の『The Best of Everything』（未邦訳）は、恋人との将来を失ったポーレットが息子を育てながら、近隣の人々との関係を通じて家族の意味を見いだす小説だった。同作は2026年のWomen’s Prize for Fictionのロングリストに選ばれた。
Kit de Waal is a novelist and editor whose work explores family, class, race and experiences of care. Born to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father, she grew up among Birmingham’s Irish and Caribbean communities. Before becoming a full-time writer, she spent fifteen years working in criminal and family law, served as a magistrate, sat on adoption panels and advised Social Services on foster care. Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon (2016), follows a mixed-race boy in Britain in 1981 who is separated from his white younger brother, Jake, while they are in foster care. Leon’s wish to reunite his family places adult decisions about race and care within a child’s understanding of belonging. The novel won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2017. Using part of her first novel’s advance, de Waal established a scholarship for Birkbeck’s MA in Creative Writing, supporting a writer who would otherwise be unable to afford the course. Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes (2022) recounts a childhood marked by poverty and religious restrictions, lived between Irish, Caribbean and British cultures, and her discovery of reading. In The Best of Everything (2025), Paulette loses the future she had imagined with her partner and raises her son while unexpected relationships in her neighbourhood reshape her understanding of family. The novel was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2026.
